You look puzzled from all that WordPress host hunting. A, B and C have great features, but C, D and E are cheaper? Can’t decide which host to pick? Well, we’ve got the antidote right here! This list covers some of the most trusted Managed WordPress Hosting companies on the Internet, which requires a sizable investment but guarantees peace of mind.

Before we get started, there’s something you should know. Managed hosting means that if something goes wrong with your WordPress installation, your host is going to fix it – not you. Be it a hard drive failure or a missing semicolon (that rarely happens) that renders the site offline, you can kick back with a beer (or a movie or both) and leave your host to fix it. We’ve tried to keep the details to a minimum, so that you won’t have to spend much time reading. So let’s begin:

WPEngine – Managed WordPress Hosting

Outside the WordPress.com hosting domain, the first name that comes to mind is WPEngine. They’re one of most popular managed WordPress hosting providers – brands like HTC, foursquare and SoundCloud use WPEngine. They have positive reviews spread across the interwebs (Google WPEngine and you’ll know what I’m talking about). They have an excellent traffic based pricing model, starting at 29 USD a month. What I love about their service is they offer an array of unique features:

Staging area: It lets you create a replica of your site and test new themes and plugins there before applying it to your main site

Siteground

You want a specialized WordPress host with servers tweaked for ultimate WordPress performance, and support that knows WordPress inside-out? But you don’t want to spend whole lot of money for an expensive managed host that lacks the good old features like free domain, email service, ftp, and more? Then SiteGround is your choice! Specialized WordPress hosting that does not miss a thing – unique WordPress speed, security and support at an affordable price.

mediaTemple

Previously covered in our CDN post, mT is a brilliant cloud based service which provides excellent WordPress hosting based on their unique GPU architecture which gives the end-user insight into how my apps are contributing to the server load. The user can quickly see if a WordPress plugin is coded inefficiently or if there are broken links in his site. Every customer is allocated a fixed amount of GPU’s also prevent inconsiderate users from consuming system resources with runaway scripts. Here’s a summary:

Page.ly

Page.ly is a well known managed WordPress hosting provider where they put security first. They’ve got a plethora of custom security features and core hardware improvements that guarantees top-notch WordPress performance. Plans start at 24 USD per month, for 25k visitors a day, with more custom plans. Here are some of its features:

WPWebHost

WPWebHost offers free CDN, free lifetime domain name, a hand-picked list of themes and plugins along with a migration service. Their packages start from 4.95 USD per month for <30k visitors a month. The pricing model is broadly classified based on number of monthly visitors. They’ve got an appealing customer testimonial base with an even more impressive showcase.

LiquidWeb

LiquidWeb is one of those well known managed hosting companies that have existed since the stone age (1997). They offer managed hosting services for any imaginable form of hosting be it dedicated, shared or VPS. Managed hosting for WordPress is like icing on the cake which is again sub-divided into 3 categories. These guys are pros – they actually promise 100% uptime and 30 minutes or less initial response time – mmm.. makes me wanna order pizza. Since they offer a wide range of hosting packages, its hard to suggest a staring plan. Its best if you contact their support stating your requirements.

PressLabs

PressLabs is an adept managed WordPress hosting provider with a pricing model similar to WPEngine, i.e. based on raw pageviews. Their servers are located across 6 data centers across US and Europe. They have just one plan priced at 199 USD per month serving upto 500,000 monthly pageviews. Additional pageviews can be bought as separate packages depending on the rate. This single plan has all the necessary features such as:

Synthesis

Developed by Copyblogger Media (they’re the folks behind the industry standard WordPress framework Genesis), Systhesis is “A Serious Solution for Serious Sites” as Yoast likes to put it. Their plans start from 27 USD a month, with daily traffic limit of 2,500 hits. Synthesis is mainly meant for folks using the Genesis Framework, but WooThemes and Thesis is supported too. Their detailed case study is pretty interesting. Here are a few tech specs:

ZippyKid

ZippyKid is an amazing service where they put simplicity first. They have impressive plans with an even more impressive list of clients. Built on custom RackSpace hardware, ZippyKid’s pricing plans are categorized based on the number of pageviews. The initial plan offers starts at 25 USD per month per site with 100,000 pageviews. All their plans come with the following features:

WordPress.com VIP

With over 1,500 servers spread across three SAS-70 Type II data centers, WordPress.com serves several billion pages every month. Starting at 3,750 USD a month for fully managed cloud hosting and 15k USD per year for the self hosted platform, this is your best bet with the right investment. Companies like TechCrunch, NY Times, Time Magazine, GigaOM who encounter millions of visits every month – all use WordPress.com VIP hosting. With features like embedded CDN, enterprise level spam protection and hourly backups, and a plethora of add-ons you cannot go wrong with this choice. They also offer technical and editorial training for your employees with both online and on-site packages. To summarize:

WordPress.com Enterprise

Meet WordPress.com VIP’s little sister – WordPress.com Enterprise. This is a recent addition to the WordPress hosting packages packed with some pretty nifty features. Starting at 500 USD per month, they offer the following:

Full frontend customization — CSS, fonts from Typekit, and JavaScript.

Access to 100+ plugins, including services from Featured Partners like Facebook and Livefyre.

WordPress.com Business

This package costs 200 USD per year and comes with unlimited space and bandwidth, live support, custom domain name and a buck load of themes including 50+ premium themes from the WordPress theme shop. However, you must have a blog on WordPress.com in order to use this package, there aren’t any self hosted packages (like the one in WordPress.com VIP) available. The cost effectiveness makes it a very popular choice for medium traffic websites. The only downside of this is you cannot use your favorite plugins from WordPress.org.

WordPress.com Pro Bundle

If you’re looking for a hassle-free blogging experience at a minimal rate, this is for you. Starting at 99 USD per year, this is by far the best hosting package for beginners and mid-range bloggers. These are its features:

Free custom domain name: .com, .net, .me or .org

Advanced customization – change CSS and fonts using TypeKit

Store dozens of videos with VideoPress

13 GB of space and unlimited bandwidth

Direct email support

The cons are similar to those of the WordPress.com Business package – inability to use 3rd party plugins from WordPress.org and no premium themes included.

Conclusion

To sum it all up, I’d say pick the managed WordPress hosting that suits your budget the most. I wouldn’t recommend going above the 20-30 USD mark for a comparatively new blog. If you’re looking for a great start with little investment, WPWebHost is your best bet as their plans start at 4.95 USD a month. Please remember that a good host is necessary but its important that your invest in good content and/or proper SEO. Happy hunting!

Sourav is a WordPress enthusiast, an avid gamer and a sitcom collector. His playlists include heavy metal, electronic, and new-age tracks. When he's not online, he's spending quality time with his friends and family.

i would like to add one more fully managed WordPress hosts to your list. https://WPOven.com. WPOven has some exclusive features even in their basic plan like dedicated IP, dedicated VPS, Premium Plugins and themes installed with the plan

Decent review. Thx. I just wraqpped up review of siteground, For the under $10/mn level seem very well WP supported. Was hoping to get yoru taqke on them. I will review the other WPwebhost. Hopefully that’s not your one and only affiliate cause they pay the most :).

Your post says that ZippyKid has “Managed WordPress core, theme and plugin updates”, but I just asked ZippyKid support today, and they said, “Plugins are not automatically updated; some customers add special customizations/coding to their plugins that automatic updating will break. We will update plugins if you specifically request for us to do so.”

Reason-2: Support is much better at wpengine. They are very helpful and friendly. The support team at websynthesis is not very cooperative, not helpful, and websynthesis support staff has very rude attitude.

wpengine also has instant Chat Support you can use anytime.

Reason-3: wpengine has better back-up system. You can create backup points, then when you need it, you can select a backup and hit “Restore” to restore your site to a previous version instantly. So I always create a new backup points before you I make any changes or add anew plugin etc. I can also download .zip files of my backups for safe keeping.

So I do not have to pay extra for daily or instant backup services.

Reason-4: Security; wpengine has their in-house system for vulnerability scanning. They also use SecTheory and Sucuri for external network connections. they scan and monitor your web site and database for known vectors and exploits.

I am not affiliated with any of the hosting companies. These are my honest opinion and experience after I use them both. Choosing a reliable hosting company, especially the one you feel comfortable contacting them any time for support and advice is very important. I hope this helps for other web site owners.

I use both WP Engine and Synthesis and as they say you get what you pay for. Don’t get me wrong I actually like both of these, but they are in completely different classes.

Synthesis I consider to be very affordable in comparison to WP Engine, but they lack the enterprise features that I have come to expect from WP Engine. I also don’t think you say you offer enterprise packages if you don’t have a phone number or a real support ticketing system. I just love the control I have with WP Engine… but even with that being said I have been VERY pleased with Synthesis especially for how much I am paying.

Out of the other hosts mentioned on here I think I am going to give Siteground a test.

While MT does have a WP specific hosting, the stats you’ve mentioned our for their regular grid hosting. Which, I use quite a bit. It’s a great mid-tier option, and their dashboard and customer service are great.

I recently tried Page.ly for a client, definitely some pros and cons:

Pros: 1. Now that everything is running, it is quite fast. No need to configure caching, it’s taken care of

2. Their dashboard is quite nice, although I don’t log in much

3. They secure and backup, HUGE peace of mind for me

4. Everyone I dealt with was great, all customer service takes place via email

Cons: 1. Only email support. No IM, no phone. I had to email a few times to get set up, avg response time was about an hour and half. In a couple emails, I asked two question. In both responses only the first was replied to. So if you have a few issues, emailing back and forth could take all day.

2. No access to DB, unless your on their Business package or higher, starting at $64. I develop locally and upload everything afterwards. After talking to them, they had me email it and uploaded it, but kind of weird.

3. No email hosting. I guess this is starting to be common practice for a lot of these hosts, buts its so nice at MT to just have everything under one roof. Getting my clients set up with contact forms on the site to correspond to their emails being hosted elsewhere was tough due to the security hardening on emails that many hosting companies are beginning to do

Pages

About WPLift

Wplift was founded in September 2010 by Oliver Dale to help people with WordPress by providing tutorials, theme roundups,
plugin guides and general WordPress news. Since then the blog has grown exponentially & now reaches hundreds of thousands of WordPress users each month.